As an apparatus generally related to the above-described purpose, it is known, for example, that a hybrid vehicle drive control apparatus disclosed in Japanese patent document 1 for collecting a travel history such as a vehicle speed or the like for each of predetermined sections as learning data, for scheduling a control index for each of the predetermined sections in order to minimizing fuel consumption of a travel to a destination based on the learning data in the travel history and road conditions of the route to the destination, and for controlling the motor and an engine according to the schedule of the control index.
Further, even when a vehicle is traveling without setting a destination by the driver, a navigation apparatus disclosed in Japanese patent document 2 automatically sets the destination, predicting the destination of the travel based on the travel route history of the vehicle according to similarity/resemblance of travel time/route of the present travel with the past ones.
[Patent document 1] Japanese Patent Laid-Open No 2000-333305
[Patent document 2] Japanese Patent Laid-Open No 2001-183150
However, in the device mentioned in the above patent document 1, a destination setting operation and a path finding operation by the user are necessary.
Further, in a destination prediction scheme in the above patent document 2, it is very likely that a predicted destination misses a right destination, thereby failing to accurately identify a highly probably traveled road section to be traveled by the vehicle.